Macaulay’s intervention led to a colonial mentality in several sections of India. But because of English language, it also led to a lot of unintended consequences.
Vandana Menon of ThePrint was awarded for her report on how an SDMC engineer arrived at a conclusion about Dara Shukoh’s burial spot & whether experts agree with his theory.
Jyoti Yadav and Bismee Taskin felicitated for their coverage of the migrant exodus, the plight of MNREGA workers & hardships faced by rural India during lockdown imposed during pandemic.
CJI D.Y. Chandrachud was speaking at the 2023 Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards, where he also emphasised the importance of free media in a democracy.
Goenka was a stingy paymaster, unable to keep the best talent that The Indian Express attracted, writes B.G. Verghese.
RNG (Ramnath Goenka) did not use...
India’s greatest “scoop-man” often regretted that the title of Editor eluded him. But he more than made up for that in fame as a columnist, diplomat, MP and peace activist.
Bangladesh’s ‘protest’ party NCP won only six seats. Why have youth movements, from Sri Lanka to Nepal, struggled to challenge traditional leadership and political parties?
CM Yogi Adityanath claims that from being called a ‘bimaru’ state, UP is now among the top-3 economies in India. The 2026 Budget session of the UP assembly is currently underway.
By next weekend, Bangladesh will have an elected government. This is India’s moment to reboot broken ties by moderating the ‘ghuspethiya’ rhetoric in poll-bound West Bengal and Assam.
We would not have got the sciences and engineering without exposure to western education. Modi is as usual selling his propaganda based on half truths.
Promoting Hindi or Bharatiya languages over English alone won’t suffice.
What we must do is reintroduce Bharatiya education.
IKS is a welcome step but actually a reinforcement of the same ‘captive mindset’, for we teach everything by default still with the western paradigms, and IKS as a separate subject.
It should be the other way around, IKS should be the default in every discipline, and WKS (Western Knowledge Systems) an additional subject for global exposure.
Also while we are at it, it felt sad to hear the key ideas expressed with a dash of Urdu (ghulami, azadi, etc.), as if a last desperate attempt to get those on board who we know were never and will never be on board with Bharat and Bharatiyata unless it is diluted with qaumiyat.
Disappointing to see the author conflate learning English as a language (which should never be a problem… Speaking for myself, that honour should only be reserved for the قومی زبان which promises none of the benefits and all of the brainwashing) and English as the medium of instruction.
Learning the language opens up all the claimed benefits. Replacing the medium creates an entry barrier that stops the vast majority of people from success, turning language into the new caste.
Also it should be borne in mind that teaching, for instance, the sciences and the social sciences in English = Smuggling in Eurocentric paradigms, frameworks, and philosophy. Once again, not intrinsically a bad idea to study how different parts of the world think, but problematic when taught as the only truth, almost like an exclusivist religion.
All I would say is
आङ्ग्लभाषायाः अध्ययनं न समस्या, आङ्ग्लभाषायां चिन्तनमेव समस्या।
We would not have got the sciences and engineering without exposure to western education. Modi is as usual selling his propaganda based on half truths.
Promoting Hindi or Bharatiya languages over English alone won’t suffice.
What we must do is reintroduce Bharatiya education.
IKS is a welcome step but actually a reinforcement of the same ‘captive mindset’, for we teach everything by default still with the western paradigms, and IKS as a separate subject.
It should be the other way around, IKS should be the default in every discipline, and WKS (Western Knowledge Systems) an additional subject for global exposure.
Also while we are at it, it felt sad to hear the key ideas expressed with a dash of Urdu (ghulami, azadi, etc.), as if a last desperate attempt to get those on board who we know were never and will never be on board with Bharat and Bharatiyata unless it is diluted with qaumiyat.
Disappointing to see the author conflate learning English as a language (which should never be a problem… Speaking for myself, that honour should only be reserved for the قومی زبان which promises none of the benefits and all of the brainwashing) and English as the medium of instruction.
Learning the language opens up all the claimed benefits. Replacing the medium creates an entry barrier that stops the vast majority of people from success, turning language into the new caste.
Also it should be borne in mind that teaching, for instance, the sciences and the social sciences in English = Smuggling in Eurocentric paradigms, frameworks, and philosophy. Once again, not intrinsically a bad idea to study how different parts of the world think, but problematic when taught as the only truth, almost like an exclusivist religion.